Into the Labyrinth

Life comes at us fast, forcing us to make decisions every day. Turn here. Jump there. Fall here. Swing there. At times, we move freely, almost unaware of our limitations. Other moments are punctuated by keen awareness of mortality closing in, choices receding, passages closed all around us as we descend into the dark. How do we respond? We use the thoughts we find, the experience of our own past, to craft methods that keep us moving, keep us going through the good and the bad. We know that others are on the same journey, that they have made it before us. Some have left us signs and symbols, and we hear echoes of their winged words ringing from deep recesses of caves all around.

I view culture as an accumulation of signs. My own culture, intimately speaking, is a collection of signs with particular meaning to me. I can use it to speak to myself, to motivate myself, to elicit some movement or attitude in myself that I want to conjure. Moving beyond that, I share culture with family and friends and foes I know, people whose proximity to me has allowed us to share transmission of our personal cultures. Outside the realm of the personal, I find the culture of strangers in large institutions: in libraries, in schools, online. And encompassing all we have the signs and tokens of Nature herself, scattered throughout the cosmos as far as we can see. Can you read the signs of the times? If you can, if you can find the thread of Ariadne grasped tight in your hand, then you can take the path of the ancestors. You can solve the labyrinth.

For some time now I have wanted to make this blog a kind of personal handbook or vademecum that I can use primarily to keep, but also to share with others who may appreciate it, the most valuable or interesting fruits of my reading. In the weeks that follow, I plan to post translations each day. I will provide some original text, Latin or Greek or another language that isn't English, followed by my own translation. I may also include commentary and perhaps link to exercises or vocabulary that may be helpful. I might link recordings of my reading. I cannot promise good pronunciation or enunciation, especially in some of the languages, but I think the practice of uttering words is valuable. It helps me remember, and that makes it beautiful to me, if to no one else.